Grand Duchess Kisa Alexandrovna of Russia

Grand Duchess Kisa Alexandrovna of Russia (Kisa Alexandrovna Romanova) (Russian: Киса Александровна Романова; 13 July [O.S. 1 June] 1887 – 1 September 1935) was the youngest child of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II. She was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Unlike her siblings Kisa was emotionally distant from them—she delighted in the smaller pleasures of life—despite being incredibly cold-natured and manipulative to her oldest brother (Nicholas II), she was labeled as the "Angel" of the family—"I once caught our youngest daughter Kisa taunting and manipulating her oldest brother, Nicholas. She seemed indifferent to his suffering and even laughed when he broke down crying one time," Her mother later recalled in an diary entry regarding the youngest Grand Duchess. For some she fixated her hatred on her oldest brother, Nicholas, but adored her parents—she considered her mother to be the "light" in her life and her father to be the "moon" in her life. The youngest daughter of Tsarina Maria Feodorovna—she was her second-favorite child and often upheld ridiculous standards to get the attention of her emotionally-distant mother—in contrast her oldest sister got her love unconditionally which made the young Kisa extremely depressed. A perfectionist by the circumstances of her birth, she often belittled others due to her low self-confidence—in a diary recovered from Gatchina Palace by the Bolsheviks, one of her diary entries uncovered a deep need to please her mother using any means possible—this deep-seated insecurity/need came from not truly understanding her "shuttered" emotions as much as she wanted to. Her father died when she was only 7, with her oldest brother Nicholas, becoming Emperor of Russia—the young Kisa became even emotionally distant from her siblings after his death—her relationship with her mother became incredibly close at this time.

In 1901, her nineteen-year-old sister, Olga, married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg—the now fourteen-year-old Kisa disapproved of his gambling and one of her diary entries even ranted how unfit he was to marry her older sister Olga. In her words, he was a "total slob with little regard to anybody he married." Her mother with her mother became incredibly fragile after she refused to marry, citing that she "despised men", this may have stemmed from the tragic death of her father which she witnessed at only seven-years-old, fearing that her husband would tragically and leave her in the world, terrified and alone—the diary entries about the subject of marriage seem to suggest so.